SANSKRIT LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE. The most important branch of the Indo-European family of languages (q.v.) in Asia is Aryan or Indo-Iranian, with two main divisions: Iranian and Indo-Aryan. Languages belonging to the latter are spoken to-day by 25o million people in India, where they are the dominant languages except in the south, in Ceylon and the Maldive Islands, and throughout western Asia and Europe by colonies of Gypsies (see ROMANY LANGUAGE). As languages of administration they spread at one time far into central Asia, where now is Chinese Turkestan; and as vehicles of Buddhism they have influenced through translation the whole of central and eastern Asia ; Hindu civilization carried their vocabulary into the East Indies and the Malay peninsula. The oldest documents of Indo-Aryan are composed in Sanskrit. These are the Vedic texts. Their exact date is unknown, but it is probable that the oldest of them belong to the latter half of the second millennium B.C. They were probably composed before the Aryans had learned the use of writing; but being religious texts which it was essen tial to preserve unchanged they were handed down by an oral tradition which by various controls was made exceedingly exact. Even at the time of entry into India there must have been some dialectical differences in the language as spoken by the various invading tribes; with their further extension into India itself these differences became accentuated. The language of the Vedic texts shows a certain mixture, but is in the main founded upon the dialect of the north-west of India. With the advance of Aryan culture into the Punjab and the Gangetic plain the eastern dialects gained in importance ; and this eastern influence, discernible in the earliest texts, constantly gains ground.
The most archaic of these texts is the Rig-veda, a collection of liturgical hymns ; this is followed by the Atharva-veda, consisting chiefly of magical formulas, of prayers, curses and incantations. Considerably later come the first compositions in prose, commen taries on the Veda and philosophical treatises termed Brahmanas and Upanisads. Although originally preserved as a religious lan
guage, Sanskrit was finally used for secular purposes. The earliest inscription in Sanskrit dates from 150 A.D., but it became the regular language of official inscriptions only in the 4th century A.D. But long before that the grammarians (of whom the most celebrated was Parlini in the 4th century B.c.) had fixed it as a learned language to which alone a strict interpretation confines the name Sanskrit, "the perfected," but which may conveniently be termed Classical Sanskrit as opposed to the Vedic or older form. As a literary language it is still cultivated; and a vast literature— philosophical, narrative, lyrical, dramatic, technical—has been written in it. Standing, in form at least, between the later Vedic and the Classical, but more nearly approaching the latter, is the language of the two great epics, the Mahabhdrata and the Ram5.yana, in which the influence of the spoken language can clearly be seen. For in the meantime the spoken dialects contin ued to develop. Some of these, such as Pali and the Prakrits (qq.v.), were in turn crystallized and used as religious languages by new sects as well as for secular purposes before Sanskrit was so employed. From these vernaculars are eventually derived the modern Indo-Aryan languages. Sanskrit, the literary language, al though preserving the sound-system of Vedic practically un changed, did not escape the influence of its descendants. The grammar was considerably changed, chiefly in a simplifying and normalizing direction ; meanings of words were altered and de veloped, and vast quantities of new words were gradually ab sorbed after being given a Sanskrit form. On the other hand Sanskrit has continued to influence the spoken languages. Sounds.—The sound-system of Sanskrit consisted of : (a) Fourteen vowels, viz.: Twelve simple vowels : a, u, 1,(0, e, 5 . Two diphthongs: ai, au.